


The Gerridi Came Up From Deka

by SevenOceansOfInk



Category: Felarya
Genre: A Traitor to His Kind, F/M, Giant/Tiny, Giantess - Freeform, Loveable Idiot, Music Saves the Day, Original Character(s), Size Difference, Vore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-15
Updated: 2014-08-15
Packaged: 2018-02-13 05:09:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2138163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SevenOceansOfInk/pseuds/SevenOceansOfInk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I completely blame the Charley Daniels' Band for this story.</p><p>This was originally a story written for a Felarya story contest, years and years ago. I didn't end up finishing it in time for me to actually submit it for the contest, but I so thoroughly enjoyed the characters that I decided to finish it anyway. The story plays on a few Felarya tropes in a cheeky fashion, but in a loving way. Sort of. Mostly. I think?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Gerridi Came Up From Deka

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains elements revolving around _voraphilia_ \-- the fantasy of one character consuming another alive. Reader discretion is advised.

“And if you’d care to take a dare, I’ll make a bet with you…”

- _The Devil Went Down to Georgia_ , Charlie Daniels Band

 

Lucian looked around fearfully as he followed his two fellow travelers through the dim interior of the Great Marshes, clutching his instrument close to his chest. To one side, dark vegetation, wet from the fog ceiling just overhead, formed an impenetrable wall into one of the larger islands of solid ground within the marshes; to the other, grass poked up out of the still waters, moving only when used as landings for the thousands of insects that hopped and buzzed around them.

He was careful to keep to the middle of the path, a road that had been stubbornly beat through the wasteland by humans to the outposts that had begun to grow in the wilderness around Negav. Each was barely larger than a campsite, but they were permanent—at least, as permanent as anything in Felarya ever could be. The marshes were one of the more stable places in this boundless, ever-changing world, but even somewhere that existed as long as this one had could disappear tomorrow, or even in the next second.

Humanity’s spread out into that countryside, however, had at least one particular consequence: all of those long, wandering roads had to be protected from the jungle's formidable predators. Fortunately for the Negavians, there was no short supply of people brave enough—or crazy enough, some would argue-- to travel out into the wilderness and risk their lives against all manner of plants and beasts to ensure that people could travel to and from Negav City without fear of being someone or something else's meal.

Lucian was not crazy. At least, he liked to hope he wasn't.

He joined Markus and Geren in something of a publicity move, to further his aspirations of becoming the most beloved musician in all the land. He had unfortunately exhausted his potential audience in Negav, and so set his sights on the rest of Felarya, which he hoped to take by storm. Traveling with mercenaries had seemed like a wonderful idea-- it was sure-fire protection against whatever was outside the city, and the two men had seemed excited about having him in their company.

It was barely more than a day down the road when two very unfortunate things happened. The first was that Markus and Geren discovered that Lucian's music was horrible, to be generous to the bard. The second, they discovered a few hours later: their initial assumptions about the musician were wrong, and Lucian was not actually a girl.

Which left them in their present situation, traveling south through the Great Marshes to Deka, a small trade outpost at the edge of the Mist Ocean. Markus and Geren generally ignored any sound or motion from Lucian and kept their weapons at the ready, constantly scanning the landscape for anything that could potentially kill them. They hoped quietly that it would try to kill Lucian first, and give them a chance to escape.

"I think," Lucian said, speaking up for the first time in hours, "we could use a bit of music to ease our nerves as we..."

"No!" snapped Geren, the swordsman, as he came to a stop in the middle of the road. He and Markus both looked around quickly, watching the fog for anything that might be moving towards them. Both took a deep breath before Geren spoke again, his voice hushed this time.

"No music. None at all. Do you want to give us away to whatever's out there?" He frowned, and prodded at Lucian's stomach with the point of his sword. "Do you even _know_ what's out there?"

Lucian stepped back from the sword slowly, lifting the fiddle to keep it away from the blade. "Really scary things?"

"Yes, bard, _really scary things_." Markus rolled his eyes. "Which means you need to keep your mouth, and your instrument, quiet."

Lucian swallowed hard and nodded, his lips tightly sealed as they began walking again.

"...how much further is it to Deka, anyway?"

The two fighters growled, gritting their teeth as they looked back over their shoulders at Lucian. "Another day or two," said Geren, "although at the rate we're going with you, we might be out here another month."

Markus looked up into the fog ceiling, and sighed. It was impossible to see the sun, or anything else for that matter, but he could tell by the dimming light that night was approaching. "Another night stuck out here," he said with a groan. "Great. Alright, let's get off the road and set up camp. I think I see a clearing just through these trees where we can try to start a fire."

Lucian's eyes moved from Markus and Geren to the trees threatening to grow out onto the road. "In there?" he said. His hand trembled as he pointed into the jungle. "Don't... don't scary things live in there?"

"No, idiot, we're going to camp in the middle of the swamp. Yes, in there!" Markus reached out and slapped Lucian across the face, the bard whimpering as he stumbled back a step or two. "We can't travel through the fog at night. It's dangerous enough out here in broad daylight. Gods only know what sort of creatures would come crawling out, looking for us once the sun goes down."

"R...r...right..." Lucian said, nodding slowly.

With a sigh, Markus began climbing up the embankment into the tall grass beside them. "Let's get a move on then. Sunset will probably be in less than an hour." He snorted, and rolled his eyes. "Maybe if we're lucky, we can actually have a hot meal tonight."

~

"Let's just leave him."

Geren stabbed at the embers covering the fire pit, staring across the meager flames at Lucian. The bard had, miraculously, managed to fall asleep despite his nervous reaction to every single sound he heard. He clutched at his fiddle like it was a stuffed animal, his thin body shivering under his blanket.

Geren turned to Markus, who had raised an eyebrow to his suggestion. "I'm serious. He's slowing us down. We could probably make it to Deka by nightfall tomorrow if we ditched him out here."

"That'd be great for our reputation," Markus said, rolling his eyes. "Everyone's going to want us to escort them across Felarya if we show up without the guy we left Negav with."

"Do you really think anyone's going to care if he's dead? They practically ran him out of town. He had to go by an alias when he met with us, so that the bartender wouldn't throw him out in the gutter." He snorted, and smirked at the sleeping Lucian. "We'd probably be doing humanity a favor by leaving him here."

Markus was still shaking his head. "Look," Geren started to say as he stood up, sheathing his sword in the process. "We have that compass we got from the mage back home, right? It'll guide us to Deka and back, practically with our eyes closed."

Markus took the compass out of his bag, and opened it. At the top, the outer dial was turned to "Negav City", while the arrow at the bottom pointed to the word "Deka" printed on the inner dial. No matter where they were, or which direction they were pointed, the compass was designed to point them towards their destination. Extremely useful, Markus had thought at the time, when you couldn't see more than ten feet in front of your face.

"Yeah, I still have it. Are you really serious about this?"

"Dead serious. I think I might kill him myself if we have to put up with one more song of his. Dumping him out here is much cleaner, though." Geren shrugged. "We'll just say he fell into an Earth Mouth or something. We tried to pull him out with rope, he slipped out of reach, and there was nothing we could do without endangering our own lives. People will understand."

Markus took another look at Lucian, who had started to snore. He hated to shirk his duty as a guard, but in this instance, with someone so utterly _annoying,_ he was willing to make an exception. The jungle was a dangerous place, and as Geren said, people would understand that sometimes, people disappear into it and never come back. He snapped the compass shut as he stood, picking up his bag. "Alright, let's go. And quietly. I don't want to have to explain this to him if he does wake up."

"Tell me about it," Geren said, the two of them slipping off into the foggy dark of the jungle while Lucian mumbled in his sleep, thanking his imaginary audience for loving him so much.

~

Nearby, in the swamps, something else was moving. A thin, slender form rose up from the surface of the water on delicate, stick-like legs, water running down her spine and dripping out of her milky white hair.

Neomea pulled the weeds out of her hair, letting them drop into the water beneath her. She had been stalking the humans traveling through the swamps for most of the day, and while it seemed that two of them had gotten away from her, the weakest-looking of the group was still fast asleep. She smiled to herself and moved forward to the edge of the water, testing the soft ground near the road with her legs to see if it would give enough to support her weight without snapping her limbs. They could heal, she reminded herself, but she hated how that felt and didn't have time for it anyway. Not now, not in the middle of a hunt.

"What a tasty little thing," she whispered to herself as she for the leather pouch strung around her waist. Her hand closed around the reed pipe within, while her other hand removed the wooden cap from a poisoned dart. The instrument was small; her slender fingers held it delicately to avoid cracking the pipe. "You shall make a nice little breakfast for me this morning..."

She tucked the dart into the pipe, and held it to her mouth. Her eyes focused on Lucian, body locking itself into position as she lined up to strike. She wondered if he would notice being shot before the toxin took effect. It didn't matter, ultimately, but she always found it curious to watch them panic before they fell unconscious.

She inhaled, and pressed the pipe to her lips. _Sweet dreams, lovely_ , she thought to herself before blowing out, sending the dart speeding into the jungle. It would take only a few minutes for the poison to work its course, so she stood and waited, already salivating at the thought of her next meal.

~

Lucian wondered if dreams were supposed to hurt. They didn't seem like they should. If the body was asleep, how would it register that it had been injured? For that matter, if what had hurt him was imaginary, how would his body even know it'd been hurt?

It was this that suggested to him that maybe it wasn't a dream, and that he was actually in pain, causing him to wake up with a loud yelp. He sat up, patting himself down, unable to find anything broken, cut or otherwise damaged. "I guess I did imagine it," he said to himself. "Though why I'd imagine getting hurt, I have no idea..."

He looked up, surprised by how low the fog ceiling had fallen while he rested, or how bright it had become. Was it daylight already? He reached up, and was surprised to find the fog suspiciously solid, and rather similar in texture to his blanket. He sighed and flopped to the ground, which also appeared strange. Where was the grass? And where was the campfire, or...

He shrieked, jumping to his feet, his head denting the bottom of the fog. His fiddle! It meant everything to him, and now he was without it. What would he do? What would he _play_? He couldn't be the greatest musician in the land if he didn't have an instrument to play! Then he'd just be an _a capella_ artist, and no one respects those...

Again, he dropped to the ground and sniffled miserably, lost in despair at this turn of events. There was no sight of the rest of his party, his instrument, or even the jungle, for that matter. Perhaps, he thought to himself sadly, this was one of those dimensional holes that were supposed to appear and disappear in the depths of the jungle, sweeping up the unsuspecting and whisking them away. Maybe he wasn't in Felarya at all, anymore! He'd never be able to go home, or to Deka, or become the greatest musician in the world!

It was just as this concern was about to overwhelm him that something else did, instead. A silhouette appeared above the fog, descending towards it. It slowly looked more like a hand, one that grabbed hold of the fog, twisting it up between its fingers.

Lucian screamed as the blanket was lifted away, leaving him dwarfed in the shadow of the massive dridder in front of him. His brain had barely contemplated the thought of running when her hand scooped him up, carrying him up to her face.

Lucian's breathing was rushed, watching her thin, violet tongue licking over lips only slightly darker than the surrounding, milk-white skin. He could feel her fingers stroking him, pressing him into her palm as she looked him over. "Wait!" he said, voice soaring upwards by several octaves. "Oh, gods, don't eat me!"

“Why in the hells shouldn't I?” she said. She squinted at him, quickly holding him up at eye level. The miniature man swung from her fingers, shaking.

“Because I'm a musician!” he said. He looked around, and looked franticly for it again. He could feel his heart splinter as he found it, laying on top of his blanket, easily ten times his own size. He looked back at Neomea, her lips curling up in amusement at his panic. “The… the greatest musician in all of Felarya! And I… I will be, once I have my fiddle back!”

“Of course,” Neomea said as she rolled her eyes. “You and everyone else.” She reached out, ready to pick the man up off the ground. She’d heard the excuse many times over: so many of her ‘meals’ would attempt to worm their way out of certain doom by claiming musical talent. Anything with a rhythm would amuse a naga, something aggressive and intimidating enough would set a harpy off their guard, while the common-place dridder clans were usually so dense artistically that they would eat someone anyway. The gerridi prided themselves on their knowledge, skill, and sheer talent with music so much so that they were never fooled by mere claims. “Look,” she said with a sigh, “let's just get this over with, okay? I'm starving, and you're a very, very late dinner, so if you would just...”

“I'll prove it for you!”

Neomea groaned as the man crossed his arms defiantly over his chest. “I'll prove it!” he said, staring straight into eyes that were nearly as big as he was. “I'll play for you right now, and if you agree that I'm right, then you have to let me go. Fair is fair!”

“You can't be serious,” she said, the breath draining out of her lungs as she slumped forwards. It was tradition to accept any musical challenge, under any terms that didn't result in her immediate death. It was an utterly stupid tradition, but one so ingrained in her mind from years of rearing that she simply shook her head. “You don’t even have an instrument! It’s on the ground, and you can’t pick it up!”

“Then make me big again!”

“I can’t.” Neomea pulled another dart out of her pouch, holding it carefully between two fingers, cap still covering the needle. “The poison’s not reversible. I imagine someone in Negav could undo it, but…” She paused and shook her head violently before glaring at Lucian. “What am I talking about? You’re my breakfast! You’ll be worrying about more than your size in a minute!”

Lucian raised his voice until it nearly squeaked on every word. “Then how am I supposed to challenge you! It’s… it’s my right as your captive!”

She cocked a thin eyebrow at him. “Wait a… how do you even know about that?”

This time, it was Lucian that rolled his eyes, waving a hand dismissively at Neomea. He suddenly seemed more confident, more composed, than he was a moment before. “I know a great deal about gerridi. You’re one of the most musical creatures in Felarya!” He paused for a moment, tapping a finger against his lips. “Well, gerridi and mermaids.”

He turned slowly from side to side in the morning breeze, dangling in midair from her fingers. The gerridi jaw hung open slightly, dumbfounded. The tiny bard had seemed like such an incompetent fool, the whole time she’d been watching him. No one with so little sense could possibly have taken the time to learn anything at all about her kind, especially someone stupid enough to want to sing loudly in a marsh full of dangerous and hungry creatures. “I thought that, once I’d secured my reputation amongst my fellow humans, I might branch out. Concerts, for the more musically-inclined of the jungle!” He laughed, and turned red as he looked up at the hand still holding him. “…from a safe distance, of course.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” Neomea said. “This can’t actually be happening.”

“You have an obligation. You have to accept my challenge, or face humiliation amongst your peers…”

“I’m the only gerridi for miles!” She resisted the urge to throw her arms apart in frustration, and simply shook Lucian instead. “No one would ever know if I just ate you now!”

“You would know. Oh, you would know, and you would never live it down. You _have_ to prove you’re better than me.” Lucian smirked and wagged a finger at her. “Eventually, someone will pry the story how you found your breakfast this morning—not that I’m going to be your breakfast, of course—and you’ll hesitate and try to skirt around your refusal. But it’ll come out. Eventually.”

Lucian watched on as Neomea’s face contorted itself in different ways, her empty hand alternately clenching and relaxing at her side. He could feel bursts of hot breath blow against him, pushing him backwards as she huffed and puffed about her situation. Finally, her spine loosened itself and she fell forward, hanging her head. “Alright,” she said with a groan, “Alright. I accept. I accept, and I will defeat you and you will be a very well earned meal, and I will write a very nice little song about how I crushed you completely with gerridi talent and you walked, in full acknowledgement of your defeat, right. Into. My. Mouth.” She snapped her jaw together on the word ‘mouth’, teeth clicking together with a sound that, to Lucian, was deafening.

“Alright,” said Lucian, a slight tremble once more in his voice. “I’ll need an instru—“

“I’ll make you a damned instrument, back at my camp. And I’m taking your strings with me.” She reached down, picking Lucian’s fiddle up and stuffing it into her bag, neck sticking out at an angle. “I can’t imagine you’ll run away without it, as much of a fuss as you made when you thought you’d lost it.”

Lucian shook his head; he looked back with longing at the fiddle as it settled into the bottom of the bag hanging by her hips. “Very well. I suggest you hold on tight. I’m in a hurry, and would like to eat _sometime_ today.”

~ 

Neomea’s camp was hardly much of one, compared to anything Lucian thought of as a camp. It was partly submerged, a wooden structure built up against the shore to partly overhang the still waters of the marsh. A few bags sat up on dry land, resting against the inner wall of the lean-to, small containers, canteens, books and tools scattered around them. “What about a fire?” he asked as they approached, holding tightly to Neomea’s black hair as her slender legs danced quickly over the wetlands. “How do you keep warm at night?”

“My clothes are a lot warmer than they look. Traveling clothes.” She pointed to the cloth wrapped around her upper body, wound over her shoulders and around her breasts, before draping over her front and back. The back lay against the bulb of her lower body, while the front hung low enough to cover her more intimate parts, no matter how fast she moved. “A fire would just attract attention—I imagine you understand that, now.”

She settled down under the lean-to, resting her body down against the shallow water as her legs stretched out under her. Her arms reached back for her tools and small pieces of wood. Her front two legs folded up in front of her, balancing the tiny shard of wood on their tips as her hands began carefully hollowing it out.

Lucian sat on a rock in front of her, watching with interest. Even at his normal height, she would be four or five times taller than him. Yet, she was working with a piece of wood no bigger than the present length of his arm as easily as though it were an instrument sized for her. Her fingers were so slender, as precise in their movements as the long legs that supported her body when she stood. _They must make such beautiful music,_ he thought to himself as he watched on with awe.

Neomea took hours to notice his gaze, and stared at him strangely. “What in all the worlds are you staring at, human,” she said.

Lucian’s eyes went wide; he quickly looked down, cheeks red in embarrassment. “Nothing!” he called out, shaking his head. He could feel the gerridi’s gaze pressing down on him like a weight, but managed to slowly raise his head. “I was just… admiring how you work. You’re very good, even working on a fiddle so small.”

“Naturally,” Neomea said; she cocked her head away from him, turning her nose up at the shrunken man. “One of the many reasons for our natural superiority in the arts. Human fingers are too… stubby for such fine gestures. Which is why you’ll lose, in the end.”

He matched her expression, looking away from her as she looked away from him. “Don’t count me down so quickly. I stand by the fact that I am the greatest musician in all of Felarya. Nothing can dissuade me from that truth, nor can I be intimidated into thinking otherwise. We will see soon enough who will win, and who will lose.”

They fell silent again for a time, Neomea turning her attention back onto the fiddle balanced in front of her. All the while, her turns looked past it, down at Lucian as he sat, a bundle of a person, on top of his rock. “You’re not afraid of being eaten?” she asked, almost to no one.

The sound startled Lucian out of his revere; he looked up, and shook his head at her. “No, I’m not scared of being eaten, because I won’t be. I’ll win. I’m the greatest musician in… look, how many times do I have to say it? If you’re trying to make my voice hoarse before we can compete, than that’s just…”

She waved her hand at him, palm sweeping from side to side, her tools held tight between her fingers. “No, no, that’s not what I…” She lowered her head slowly, careful to move the miniature fiddle out of her way as she leaned down until her face hovered just above Lucian.

Her mouth opened wide in front of him, the young man’s heart pounding as he stared back over her long, pointed tongue, back to where the narrow tunnel of her throat plunged into blackness. Suddenly, in a blur of movement, the head plunged into the water with a splash. Long, black tendrils of hair floated over the surface of the marsh, strands separating from one other before lifting away with a rush of falling water.

Neomea threw her head back, holding the fish in her mouth tight between her jaws. Her throat stretched open, and pulled the squirming fish inside, until her jaw snapped tightly shut behind its flapping tail.

Lucian watched the bulge in her throat descend out of sight; the gerridi sighed as her windpipe opened again, her meal dropping into her stomach. “What?” she said, her voice severe.

He wasn’t sure how to respond. The efficiency the gerridi caught her meal with inspired awe; the sight was, to say the least, humbling. She could just as easily devour him as she did her catch; yet, they sat across from one another while she carved him an instrument to play. There was even a grace to her attack. Her entire body moved as her fingers did, her every muscle shaped by evolution to mold the gerridi into deadly, vicious and—he swallowed hard, disturbed that the thought even crossed his mind-- _beautiful_ predators.

“Are you going to answer me?”

“Sorry,” he said, quietly for once. “I couldn’t help but watch.”

Neomea shrugged and settled back down into her lean-to, picking the unfinished fiddle off the ground. “You’ll be following that fish soon enough. You might as well be thinking about it now.”

He looked away from her. His mind put himself in the fish’s place, suddenly snapped up by his host’s jaws, staring over her tongue and down into her throat. He expected the fear the sight instilled in him, but an excitement, a comfort, at the thought of her esophagus wrapping tightly around him startled him. “We’ll see,” he said, and hoped that his bowed head hid the red in his cheeks.

He waited until the warmth in his face subsided, then looked up at Neomea. She was, once more, absorbed in her work, fingers working like needles to hollow out his instrument’s interior.

“Why,” he started, the words comprising his question forming in his mouth just as they formed in his head. “Why do you eat humans?”

She looked at him again, nearly dropping the fiddle held between her fingers. “Why in all the worlds would you ask?”

“Because I want to know. Because if I lose—and I won’t lose, mind you—but on the chance that I might lose, I want to know why you want to eat me so badly.”

With a groan, Neomea set her work down and laid out flat on the ground. Her legs spread out around her, the front-most limbs reaching past Lucian to rest on the surface of the water. She propped her head up in her hands. “You taste good. That’s the long and short of it. Humans are delicious, a nice treat when most of your diet consists of… well, you saw what I just ate. Swamp fish are bland; the insects and land-life aren’t much better. Humans, though…”

She licked her lips, chest expanding outwards as she breathed in a deep breath before sighing. The sound was sensual, Lucian thought to himself as he shivered.  “You taste so many different ways. Sweet. Salty. Bitter. Some of your kind have a metallic taste to your flesh; others smell and taste like fertile ground and growth. You’re like spice, candy, to us. You excite our palettes just as music excites our souls.”

Lucian nodded slowly. “We make it worth living here, then.”

“You could say that, I guess.”

Lucian looked down at his hands. He breathed in, then frowned and scolded himself for being so stupid. Even if he had a scent, a taste, he wouldn’t notice it. “What do you think I taste like?”

She smiled and sat back up. “I’d rather wait to find out. It’ll make eating you that much more enjoyable, if I don’t know what to expect ahead of time.”

She couldn’t help but laugh quietly at the chill that ran through the young man’s body, reaching out to pat her fingertips lightly against his head. “I’ll find out soon enough. Better that you not worry about it. This should be a fair competition, and it won’t be if you’re anxious. Go to sleep. I interrupted it, and I will see to it that you finish it in peace.”

“You really expect me to sleep after hearing that?” Despite his protest, though, Lucian yawned. The sun was only now rising over the marshes, its light slowly breaking through the persistent blanket of fog. Neomea did not bother to answer, and soon enough, Lucian lay on his back with his eyes closed and his mind slowly sinking into unconsciousness.

~

Hours passed before Lucian woke; the sun shone as a blurred disc high above the fog ceiling, where it warmed the humid swamp air. He was startled by the hard ground beneath him at first, very different than the soft dirt he had laid his sleeping bag on. It was only after his eyes adjusted to light that he remembered where he was. I’m not dreaming, he told himself as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. I really was caught…

He stretched his arms to either side and was surprised when one hand hit something solid. Neomea looked up at the shout he gave, and leaned towards him. “You’re awake,” she said and pointed a slender finger at the fruit that sat next to him. “I gathered a berry or two for you to eat. I figured you would like a little breakfast before we started.”

Lucian sat up and faced the berries. “Trying to fatten me up, flavor me, I see,” he said. Nonetheless, his growling stomach compelled him to plunge his hands into his meal. He pulled out a mass of sticky fruit flesh and began eating. “Not that it’ll do you any good. I’m going to win.”

“Flavor you? And spoil your natural taste?” She laughed; a sudden, sharp sound in the thick air. “I only get to enjoy you once, dear. It would be uncivilized of me to smother your natural flavor with common fruit.”

He stopped, pale blue juice smeared across his face. “Then why bother?”

“Because humans eat breakfast? Honestly, name me something that doesn’t. You’re food, but you’re also my guest. I intend to treat you properly as both.”

He turned and looked up at her; she looked kind, almost tender, as she looked back at him. “You treat your food with dignity.”

“Shouldn’t I?” she said. “Wouldn’t you?”

He looked down at the lump of fruit he held, its sugary juices dripping down onto the rock he stood on. “I never really thought of it.”

She shook her head. “You don’t really appreciate fine food, then. Perhaps it is impossible, until you realize you are deprived of it. We have our first taste of a human when we’re young, small children, and it is… practically a divine experience.”

Something lit up in her eyes, and she snapped her fingers. “Speaking of art,” she started, and reached down to the ground beside her. “I finished this before I fell asleep. Wash up, once you have finished eating, and when you are ready, we’ll begin.”

Holding it carefully between two fingertips, she lowered the miniature fiddle to the ground in front of Lucian, who stared at the instrument in awe. It was a perfect reproduction of his fiddle, complete with miniature bow, every detail crafted exactly as it was on the larger instrument. He crouched down, inspecting it closely. “Is this…” he said, voice hushed, “are the strings made from… from your own silk?”

“Of course not!” Neomea crossed her arms. “Gerridi don’t produce silk!” She lifted a leather bag off the ground. Inside was a tightly wound ball of dridder silk, easily made up of hundreds of yards of the material. “Stronger than steel or cat-gut and much softer on the fingers. I think you’ll find it a much more pleasing instrument than the one you had owned.”

He fell to one knee, head bowed to Neomea. “Thank you. Win or lose… this is a very kind gift. I will play it with all the strength in my hands and heart.”

She watched him run down to the water, plunging his hands and face in to wash the sticky fruit from his skin. “I hope you will,” Neomea said quietly and sat down.

It took only moments for Lucian to take his place back on top of the rock, lifting his new fiddle and bow. “The rules of a musical competition are very simple,” Neomea said. “Both parties will play what they feel is their best musical work. If your piece is better than mine, you win, and may leave. If my work is better…”

Lucian nodded, his eyes closed. “I know. If you win, I’m your breakfast.” He took a deep breath. “What assurance do I have that you’ll judge fairly?”

“What choice do you have but to believe me? If you run, you won’t get far, and you’ll be eaten anyway.” She lifted the flute to her lips and stared down the slender tube at Lucian. “I will perform first. It’s only fair… that way, you know what you are up against. After I play, I will offer you the chance to forfeit, if you would rather not embarrass yourself.”

“I won’t embarrass myself,” he said, hardly giving her the chance to finish speaking. “And I won’t forfeit. Win or lose, I will play, and you will see how great a musician I am.”

“Very well. Do enjoy, then.”

She raised the flute to her lips and began to play. Lucian sat as the music began to flow forth from her—it was slow and haunting, and sounded like the ebb and pull of flowing water. Complex chords and strings of notes filtered through the thick air and seemed to curl around him. It was marvelous, he thought to himself, and felt his heart sink down through his chest. How could he compete with a music as still and eerie as the marsh around them, as subtle and delicate, but as strong as the hand she plucked him off the ground with?

After several minutes, the music faded to quiet. “Your turn then. Again, if you want to concede now, I would be more than happy to…”

“No!”

Neomea jumped back, nearly dropping her flute as Lucian thrust a pointed finger towards him. “No! I will not back down, not now.” He bowed his head, breathing deeply to hide how his body shook. “You played beautiful music. I am honored to hear it, and thank you from the bottom of my heart for allowing such lovely sounds to fall on my ears.”

His head snapped up again, eyes narrow as they stared straight through Neomea. “But I am the greatest musician in all of Felarya! Now sit right down, and I will show you how truly excellent music is done!”

He raised the bow to the fine, sparkling strings of his fiddle, and slowly tapped his foot to three counts of a beat. One, two, three.

Neomea’s eyes went wide as music erupted from the tiny man, stunned as she watched the bow slide, bounce and skip through the music. It was fiercely confident, a hurried rush of music that lost none of its harmony in its speed. Lucian’s body swayed and hopped, his head bobbing from side to side as though he were his own metronome, counting out time.

It truly was music the likes of which she had never heard, one entirely alien to the quiet life of the Great Marshes. It was wild, raucous music, music to dance to; music to cry out and holler out to in shouts of joy. It took immense willpower to keep her hands down and avoid clapping out the beat.

Her stomach groaned loudly at its emptiness. Within her mind, she told it to shut up. She couldn’t eat this man, not now. She wanted to ask him how to play like this. She could not deny herself the knowledge, or her soul the pleasure of this sound, by reducing the young man to mere nutrients.

Her thunderous applause nearly deafened Lucian as he finished. “You… you liked it?” He stared at her in shocked awe, his fiddle held tight to his chest. He couldn’t remember the last time he heard the sound. “Really?”

“Yes!” Neomea dropped down over him, hands planted on the ground, her head hovering just above him. “That was… I’ve never heard anything like that! Tell me! Tell me how you learned to play like that!”

The sight of her so close made him curl up in a ball. He peaked out from behind the neck of his fiddle at her. “So… you’re not going to eat me, then?”

“I couldn’t!” She laughed and shook her head. “Alright, alright. I concede. You are the greatest musician in Felarya; at least, of all the ones that I’ve heard. So long as you teach me what you know about music, I will never eat you. You have my word.”

He uncurled himself, a childlike look of delight quickly coming over his face. “We could play together as a band!” he said in a hushed, excited voice. “A traveling band, famous across the countryside!”

“We’ll seek our inspiration through this wide world, and capturing in song!” She clapped her hands together, rubbing her palms against themselves. “Famed for our voices and music, from sea to sea, the deep forests to the Frost Peaks! Anyone with any taste will cheer for us!” She paused, then threw her arms open, palms pointed outwards. “No! They will come to see us! Our fame will reach far and wide: Neomea and… ah…”

“Lucian,” he said. “You were going to eat me, and you didn’t even know my name.”

She scowled at him, hands dropping to her hips. “How often do you ask your meals what their names are?”

He lacked words to answer her with, and conceded that little point to her. “Then that’s who we are. Lucian and Neomea, the greatest musicians in all Felarya! Together, we will…”

His declaration was interrupted by a loud rumble from Neomea’s stomach. She laughed timidly and pressed a hand against her abdomen, flinching as the muscles within cramped. “I really hope the end of that sentence is, ‘…find a certain gerridi something to eat.’ The fact that you won doesn’t change the other fact that I’m still hungry.”

He turned his back to her and stared out across the swamp. “You still want a human, don’t you?”

“Of course. I’ve been eating swamp fish for days, now. My taste buds are dying for something with actual flavor to it.” She wrapped her arms around her waist, trying to steady the muscles compressing her empty stomach. “If you’d rather not watch, you can stay here until I…”

He raised a hand, his back still turned to her. “I lived my entire life in Negav. My entire childhood, I was brought up hearing stories about the monsters that lived out in the jungle beyond the city walls. Beasts that violently consumed anyone they got their hands on.”

Slowly, he turned to face her, a smile on his face. “But to see you feed—watch the grace with which your body moved, trim muscles flexing just beneath your skin, the snap of your jaws closing around your prey. There is… an aesthetic to watching you draw that life into your body, and make it your own.”

“An aesthetic?” One thin eyebrow lifted up towards her hairline.

“Indeed. Thus, watching you feed is… lovely. The pleasure of watching you sate yourself takes precedent over the horror you instill in your prey. In fact, it may be that horror, that struggle between prey and predator, which contributes to the aesthetic.”

“So, if you would like,” he finally said, hand gesturing out towards the swamp, “there are two men in this marsh whom may satisfy you.”

She leaned down towards him, eyes half-covered by her eyelids. “The men who abandoned you?” she said.

“Of course.”

Neomea’s hand darted out towards him and took his arm in a tight hold between two fingers. Lucian gasped and felt his heart pound against his rib cage. The strength in these two digits alone, he realized, could easily break his arm from his body. “What did I…?”

“Let make this painfully clear. I am not your new pet gerridi. We are not pets.” The look on her face, which now hovered inches from his body, was vicious. Her eyes were open little more than slits cut into her face, and the tension drawn in her facial muscle as she frowned made her look alien and inhuman. “I am not here to gobble up all the mean people who ever hurt you. And you are very much still a potential meal.’

“I thought you…” His body shook. “You said you didn’t want to…”

“I said I wanted to learn all I could from you. There may come a time when the taste of your body is more valuable me than the talent in your mind. That day is not today. It may be another day, or it may be never.” She drew closer, and Lucian once more felt her hot breath against his skin. “When that day comes, it won’t matter how many people you feed me, or how beautiful the music you play is. If I want you, I will have you. Am I understood?”

His mouth felt dry, but he managed to squeak out the words, “Yes, ma’am.”

She sat up again, her hand scooping Lucian up off the ground. “Very well. Shall we go find your former traveling companions, then?”

~

“We're lost.”

Geren grumbled as he snapped at his partner, hitting him in the shoulder. “The compass is supposed to point us back to Negav. Where the hell are we going?”

“Shut up! We're not lost!” Markus jammed his hand down into his bag, pulling the enchanted compass out and frowning. The needle was spinning wildly, pointing out neither their original destination, nor the way back to Negav. “What's wrong with this piece of crap? It's magic, magic's not supposed to go haywire in the jungle!”

“We are lost! We're lost in this damned miserable pit, all because of that...”

“Shut up!” Markus yelled as he threw the compass at Geren, the small device bouncing off the  man's chest and into the swamp. “I don't want to hear another word about that stupid bard! We just need to keep going the way we came, _which we can remember_ , and we'll get out! Now shut up and keep--”

The sound of strings being plucked sent a chill down their spines. Geren stood up straight, eyes looking in all directions for the source of the sound. “Did you just hear…”

“No, I didn’t.” Markus grabbed Geren’s arm and tried to pull the swordsman down the trail with him. “Look, we don’t have time for your hallucinations. We need to make some progress towards Negav before nightfall. I don’t want to spend another night in this hellhole.”

“Don’t speak so cruelly, my friends. The swamp can be rather nice, once you get used to it.”

They both stopped this time and turned towards the trees. Up high in the branches, the miniature Lucian sat with his fiddle resting against his lap. He plucked the strings again and smiled down at them, a quiet laugh bubbling up past his lips. “I’ve been enjoying myself, at least. Perhaps you two should stay a while. Maybe then you’ll see how nice it can be.”

“Bard?” Geren’s voice was hushed, stunned at the sight above his head. “What the hell—“

“Clearly, this is some sort of trick!” Markus dug a fist into Geren’s side, then shook the pain out of his hand as the other waved towards the path. “It’s some sort of… some sort of marsh fairy, or some other illusion. Something’s messing with our heads, and I don’t want to be around to find out what it is!”

Lucian shook his head slowly, and giggled again. “It’s no trick. Although, something— or rather, someone— is playing a game with you. But that someone is already here.”

Before either of the two could speak, or even take another step, two darts flew through the air and stuck into their necks. Their hands flew up to pull the missiles out of their skin, only to find that the movement made them dizzy and sent the swamp swirling around them. “What…” Markus said, frantic as he fell to his hands and knees. “What just…”

Neomea’s hand snapped them up off the ground, the two continuing to shrink until they were ucianhtnapped them up off the ground, the two continuing to shrink until they were Luwirling around them. nto their necks.  no bigger than her palm. Slender fingers closed around them as they were brought up to her face, squeezing them until all they could do was squirm in her grip. “And you have both lost that game, unfortunately for yourselves. Do accept our apologies.”

She tossed Geren up into the air and watched him tumble end over end. Then, with a split-second motion, she snapped him up in her mouth, his body pressed against the roof of her mouth by the bulk of her tongue. She let out a soft moan as she rolled him around, her laugh echoing all around him as she felt his fists pound against her.

She threw her head back and swallowed, the man’s thrashing body squeezed into her throat, his limbs pinned against him by the walls of her esophagus. She inhaled deeply once he cleared the entrance to her windpipe, and looked down at Markus with a mad look. “Your friend was delicious,” she said, and licked her lips.

“Monster!” he screamed, and struggled once more to break free. “Let me go! Let me go, or I’ll…”

“What exactly will you do?” Lucian spoke up from his tree branch, where he watched the mercenary try desperately to free himself. “You can’t lift your crossbow, and it’s on the ground anyway. Will you try using your fists? I don’t think those will work…”

“Lucian, do stop harassing him.” She looked back down at Markus. “You want to be let go? Alright. If you reach the ground, I’ll let you run. That sounds fair to me.”

She threw Markus up into the air, where the two of them listened to him scream. It was music to both their ears—the sweet sound of revenge, and the delicious cry of terror, both captured in one desperate sound.

Lucian watched the man arc through the air, and saw Neomea dart underneath him, her torso low to the ground at first. She then rose up quickly, head snapping back until her eyes pointed towards the sky. He mouth opened in time for the bowman to fall inside, then snapped shut audibly around him.

She held him there, tongue curled around Markus’ body, squeezing the taste out of him before the saliva moistening her mouth made it impossible to ignore gravity any longer. She felt him drop like a stone into the depths of her body, inhaling again as she settled back onto the ground.

“Satisfied?” Lucian asked simply. His voice was hushed with awe.

Neomea wiped the moisture from her lips and smiled at him. “Very,” she answered, and plucked the man up off his branch.

She moved back off into the water and let her legs stretch out, sighing in relief when they made contact. Lucian sat on her shoulder and felt out a tune with his fingers and bow, trying to evoke in music what he felt watching her. They would make the most beautiful music together, he thought to himself, the first notes of his fiddle already drifting out across the marsh. They would make exquisite music, and become the greatest musicians in Felarya.

~

[ _fin_ ]


End file.
